The present invention relates to a karaoke apparatus for extracting partial performance sections from a plurality of music pieces and for smoothly linking or connecting these partial performance sections to provide medley play.
In the conventional karaoke apparatus, karaoke music data of karaoke music pieces are played back a piece by piece. Further, the karaoke apparatus can provide a medley in which each main section called sabi of a plurality of music pieces are sequentially connected to each other. Therefore, many karaoke singers prefer to the medley.
As described, the medley is composed of a plurality of music pieces. The medley is provided in the form of a composite karaoke music piece. The plurality of music pieces that constitute a medley are independently registered in the karaoke apparatus. It is necessary to compose the medley separately from these individual music pieces. Consequently, in registering karaoke music pieces into the karaoke apparatus, a composite music piece of the medley must be registered separately from the individual karaoke music pieces. This causes much expense in time and effort. Further, there is a considerable time lag between the registration of individual music pieces and the registration of a composite music piece of medley composed of the individual music pieces. In addition, the registration or reservation of the ready-made medley consumes the same data volume as that of the individually registered music piece, so that a data storage area for the medley must be provided additionally. Further, favorite music pieces that karaoke singers want to sing are not always adopted into the medley, so that the registered medley is not always a favorite one for the karaoke singers.
On the other hand, another karaoke apparatus has been proposed in which main sections are specified and cut out from a plurality of karaoke music pieces and the specified main sections are played sequentially. In this karaoke apparatus, however, the specified sections are simply played back sequentially so that joints or connections between the sections are not smooth to make the custom-made medley less appealing to ear than the before-mentioned ready-made medley, thereby somewhat discouraging karaoke singer's eagerness to sing.